World’s Fourth-Largest Memory Maker Charges More Than Samsung For DDR5 Server Modules As $8.6 Billion Shanghai IPO Nears And Pentagon Military Company Designation Looms
According to AI Weekly / Reuters, China’s CXMT ordered engineers from SiCarrier; a chipmaking equipment vendor with deep ties to Huawei out of its Hefei R&D cleanrooms in June 2026. The expulsion followed a pricing fight between CXMT and Huawei, and the engineers have not been allowed back.
CXMT is now the world’s fourth-largest memory maker and is charging more than Samsung’s roughly $1,240 per 64GB DDR5 server module for comparable products. Q1 2026 revenue reportedly hit $7.5 billion, a 719 percent jump year-on-year. The company has signed deals worth over $7 billion with ByteDance and over $3 billion with Tencent, and is heading toward an $8.6 billion Shanghai IPO while doubling wafer capacity toward 600,000 units per month.
The irony is sharp. Beijing built CXMT to give Chinese hyperscalers cheap, domestically controlled memory. Instead they got a supplier that behaves like Samsung on a bad day and multiple Chinese tech firms have already complained to the government about price hikes delaying product launches.
The Pentagon has designated CXMT a Chinese military company. If Washington moves it onto the Entity List, the same scale that let CXMT expel Huawei’s engineers becomes the vulnerability.
Check out our previous coverage of China’s tech sector on The Trusted Times.
